One-Year Post-Kidney Transplant

One-Year Post-Kidney Transplant
365 days with Sidney (the kidney), and I’m still discovering that a “thank you” is too small a phrase for a gift that changed everything.

A year is a strange unit of time to hold up against a life that desperately needed a miracle. It is long enough to change nearly everything, and short enough that I can still smell that hospital room during my recovery, the antiseptic smell if I let myself think about it too long. That room was also where my recovery began, and the first week was the hardest.

My mind held on to the facts and let go of the feelings.
I remember there was a constant pain that followed my transplant, and I remember the pain meds that attempted to dull the intensity, but I no longer remember how that pain felt. I remember the small hospital bed that never got comfortable and those nights I got little sleep, but not the exhaustion that came. I remember the walks where every step took all my strength and the hospital hallway stretched farther than I believed I could go, but each walk helped me recover quickly. I remember the hunger that wasn’t there and the hospital food that never tasted good, but not how long it took to regain my appetite. And the six-inch surgical scar that looked so gross at first has faded, now barely visible. Healing does that. It lets the pain go, turning what I thought I would never forget into a story I can tell without reliving it.

What remains is the gift, the God who carried me through it, and the milestone I celebrate today: one-year post-kidney transplant.

***

Over the Last Year
I spent this year writing about it one week, one month, one milestone at a time: the numbers, the appointments, the medications, the small and the large victories that felt enormous when they happened. This is not one of those updates. This is me (left), standing here after 365 days and looking back at the entire journey, instead of just measuring how much of it I had covered.

Who I Was Compared to Who I Am
A year ago, I measured my life in lab numbers because they were the only proof that anything was changing. I spent eighteen months tied to a dialysis machine before the kidney transplant, and back then I measured myself by how many liters I could clear and how little REM sleep I got.

Today, I measure things differently. I measure a year by the fact that I no longer collapse onto a couch out of exhaustion. I measure it by mornings that begin without dread, by afternoons where my energy lasts long enough to finish what I started, and by evenings that belong to me again. I measure it by the way my body responds to effort, not with protest but with possibility.

What I Thought I Knew, and What I Actually Learned
A year ago, I thought gratitude was a feeling. I have learned it is closer to a discipline, something you choose again on mornings it doesn’t come naturally.

A year ago, I thought healing was a line you could plot from Point A to Point B. There was a week when my numbers stalled, and I sat in the dialysis clinic parking lot wondering if I had done something wrong. That pause felt like a reset, a curve in the path I didn’t expect, and honesty about my fear was the only thing that let me move forward again. This year taught me it curves, circles, resets, splits, pauses, and waits for honesty before moving again.

A year ago, I thought receiving help said something small about me. What I learned instead came in moments I didn’t expect. It was the first time I understood that receiving help says something about being loved, not about being weak.

A year ago, I thought faith meant having certainty about the outcome. I have learned that faith means showing up for the appointments, the medications, the blood draws, even on the days I didn’t see a point. My kidney function was still declining then, and nothing I did could change that.

All of these lessons came from people who showed up for me long before I understood what their presence meant.

To Jeff, Who Stepped Up
Jeff did not have to raise his hand. But when he heard how my kidney function was failing, he decided that was unacceptable and stepped up: tested, matched into a paired chain of strangers, and followed it all the way through to his own living kidney donation on October 23rd, one day after my transplant.

A year ago, the news of his selfless decision to donate was too much for me to comprehend. Only hours earlier, I had asked my church to pray for a living donor. This summer, on a trip to Chicago with a group of eight new and old friends, it was just something Jeff and I talked about at the White Sox game and the museum: we didn’t have to drag a dialysis machine along for the trip. That, more than anything, might be the best proof I have that this year actually happened. Something that used to feel impossibly large now fits inside our (extra)ordinary friendship.

A Donor Whose Name I Still Don’t Know
A year of living with someone else’s kidney has taught me that you do not need a name to know who changed your life.

I have imagined the moment we might meet more than once: a first email or letter, maybe an awkward first phone call where neither of us knows what to say. I do not know if that moment is still ahead of me or if it will ever come. Sometimes I picture them opening the thank you letter I sent, reading those words I wrote in a moment when I needed them to know what their gift meant.

The Heroes I Didn’t Expect
A year ago, in a letter to my younger self, I promised him something I did not fully believe yet: “You’ll encounter many heroes; mild-mannered heroes who don’t need to wear a cape.”

I owe him an update. He was right, and he did not know how right he was.

This year taught me that most heroism does not look like heroism while it is happening. I think about one morning in recovery when a nurse adjusted my IV line with hands so practiced they barely disturbed the tape on my skin. She didn’t say anything, didn’t make it a moment, didn’t ask for acknowledgment. But the competence of that gesture stayed with me. It looks like Mom and Pop driving me to another appointment; they never once complained about how many there were (I am sure I did). I remember one drive in particular, the hum of the tires on the road, my mom asking if I felt up to talking or if I just needed the silence. That small question carried more care than anything dramatic could have. It looks like my sister Angie checking in at the exact moment I needed her when the world had gone silent. It looks like a friend who said yes to donating before he fully understood the impact of being a direct answer to a prayer. None of them wore a cape that I could see.

Sidney and Me: A Year Later
A year ago, Sidney moved in during an early morning surgery. A year later, we are ‘roommates’ now, in the best possible way. Sid has spent 365 days doing the work that used to require two working kidneys, then a dialysis machine, and they have never asked for a thank you.

I still use humor (as part of my rigorous medicine regimen) and still laugh about the Yelp review I wrote for Sidney, but the truth underneath the ‘LOL’ is simple: I am grateful for every day they’ve given me.

What Faith Looked Like This Year
Faith didn’t change for me this year. It deepened, becoming the choice to show up when the path ahead remained hidden. I carried that same trust into recovery, into the waiting, into the days when progress stalled. It wasn’t a new lesson, just a fuller version of the old one. Somewhere around this same season, I sat down for a conversation about faith and health on a church podcast, the same two threads running through this entire kidney journey blog. You can hear that conversation here: When Your Body Fails: Faith, Fear and a Kidney Transplant.

A Few (Endless) Thank Yous
My gratitude for the people who carried me this year is stitched into every moment I’ve written. Jeff’s yes is woven into a dialysis-less Chicago trip. My mom and pop’s faithfulness sits inside every appointment they drove me to. Angie’s timing showed up at the exact moment her check-ins mattered most. My transplant team’s precision is in every lab number that finally moved in the right direction. The prayers of my family, friends, and church family are in the days I made it through when I shouldn’t have had the strength to. Gratitude feels different now; sometimes it shows up as a warmth in my chest when I think about all the people who walked with me on this journey.

And to me: I showed up for the blood draws. I took the medications. I kept writing even on the weeks I did not want to. I drank the water the nurses said to drink. I didn’t give up during those early and uncertain days when all the cards were heavily stacked against me.

365 Days. 52 Weeks. One Year.
Three hundred sixty-five days ago, I could not have told you what any of this would feel like from the other side. I could not have told you that Jeff would go from a decision I could barely process to a friend I still text on a random Tuesday, or that a stranger I have never met would become someone I think about each day. For the first time in a long while, the not knowing feels like a gift.

Related Milestone Blogs:
Christmas: The Gift
New Years: This time last year…
Easter: Easter and my kidney transplant
Six Months Post-Kidney Transplant (4/22/2026)
My birthday: Beginnings & New Beginnings
It was no ordinary Sunday